Max Verstappen described his 2022 season as “incredible” after winning his 14th race of the year in Mexico, setting a new record.
Having clinched the world championship with four races to spare and helped the team to the constructors championship in Austin last week, Verstappen, beat Lewis Hamilton to win the Mexican Grand Prix by 15 seconds. It was the Red Bull driver’s 14th win of the season in 20 races, breaking the record jointly held by Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher.With two more races of the season remaining in Brazil and Abu Dhabi, Verstappen says he is aiming to add even more to his impressive tally of wins for the season.
“It’s been an incredible year so far,” Verstappen said. “We are definitely enjoying it and we’ll try to go for more.”
Verstappen held off a challenge from George Russell on the run to turn one at the start and then used medium tyres for a long second stint to establish a healthy lead over Hamilton behind him. He hailed his start as being important to being able to remain ahead of the chasing Mercedes.
“That helped me out a lot for the rest of the race, to stay in the lead after turn one,” Verstappen said.
“Of course, you’re also on a different strategy to the cars around us. But again, an incredible result. The pace of the car was again really nice. We had to look after our tyres because it was a very long stint on the medium, but we made it work.
Verstappen has won 14 of the 18 races he has finished in 2022 with only two retirements coming in the opening race in Bahrain and the third round in Australia. Of the races he has finished, he has only missed the podium twice in Silverstone and Singapore, where he finished seventh both times.
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2022 Mexican Grand Prix
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- Mercedes explain Hamilton’s engine cut-outs during Mexican Grand Prix
Biker56 (@biker56)
31st October 2022, 0:30
From googling “Dictionary Incredible”:
incredible: /ɪnˈkrɛdɪb(ə)l/
adjective
1. Impossible to believe.
OK.
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
31st October 2022, 6:37
2. difficult to believe; extraordinary.
“the noise from the crowd was incredible”
Conveniently left this one off huh.
Biker56 (@biker56)
31st October 2022, 9:10
Um – I explained what I did to find it, you did it too, and you are saying I concealed something?
Let me explain. I have a rather odd sense of humor, and can’t resist deploying it.
The first meaning of the word is IMHO mildly amusing, as it implies that the statement in the article is “impossible to believe”. This implies that the speaker is, shall we say, “being economical with the actualité”.
The second meaning is slightly less amusing, as it implies that the statement is merely “difficult”, and therefore has a possibility of being true. In my opinion, not as amusing.
So I stopped after the first meaning, which emphasised the rather weak ‘joke’.
Of course, my real intention was to mislead, gaslight, and deceive the reader. Oh, wait, no I didn’t, that was someone else.
And to further explain, any joke that needs explaining is not funny. Like most of my ‘jokes’.
Armchair Expert (@armchairexpert)
31st October 2022, 5:14
Max won 14 races out of 20 this year, while scoring 416 points, with 2 DNFs caused by technical problems. Sir Lewis Hamilton, despite driving rocketships 1s/lap faster than his rivals AND almost bulletproof reliability, never managed to win more than 11 races in any of 7 dominant seasons and he scored 413 points during his best attempt. Are there still any doubters Max is already the best driver in F1 history and better driver than Sir Hamilton? What needs to happen in the future for people to acknowledge that’s the case? Max is going to dominate years to come, winning title after title, and beat most of the records – maybe then you’ll understand what is blatantly obvious already now.
MacLeod (@macleod)
31st October 2022, 7:53
He is one of the best but i don’t agree with beter then Lewis as Max said it’s almost impossible to compare drivers from different era’s. (Even Lewis is from the Era before Max with total different cars) When Lewis started in F1 i was really going for him as he was different then the rest and could make Alonso life hard. That Lewis is what Max is now (for me) and after Max there will be a new driver that is the way if F1..
Wybe
31st October 2022, 8:38
What a relief, a balanced comment!
Emma
31st October 2022, 9:18
Or Max has a far weaker teammate this year? Does the RB qualify to be called a rocketship or it’s a pure POS that’s being heroically dragged to all those wins by the Best Ever? Man – I don’t know why you’re pushing this so hard but it is an exercise in futility. Even if everyone agrees with you that Max is the best of all time, so what? Nothing you say will take away Ham’s titles or wins. And even if anyone disagrees with you, the same applies. Can’t we enjoy each season as it comes – celebrating those drivers and teams that excel?
CarWars (@maxv)
31st October 2022, 9:19
Max will hopefully get more competition. Dominance is boring.
Next year hopefully Redbull, Ferrari, Merc fight, maybe 3 way fight for the title, with the possibility of the second drivers adding to fire. One can dream.
Likely going to be Max vs Lewis again. At least merc will be able to mount a yearlong campaign, whereas Ferrari will find some way to throw it away in the second half.
hyoko
31st October 2022, 11:51
Those kind of arguments never convinced anybody I’m afraid. I find math models somehow more convincing, I sorely miss F1metrics, over 3 years now without no posts. Max ranked 9th of all time then but his career had only just begun, he would surely be in the top three now.
BasCB (@bascb)
31st October 2022, 12:43
Well, I do think that you conveniently ignore that for many of the first of those seasons he was actually in pretty tough competition with his own teammate who took many wins and points from him @armchairexpert. Max hasn’t had a teammate who was really able (nor really encouraged/allowed) to put pressure on him since Ricciardo left the team.
If we look at the amount of wins taken by the dominant car in the season and look at how many of those were by Max and by Lewis, you will see a rather different picture emerging than you try to paint here.
Yes, there is definitely a difference in that the Mercedes in those first years was more dominant – the Red Bull is good in qualifying, and a really great car for racing, but not clearly the better car this season. But both the Mercedes team from 2014-2018 and Red Bull this year operated as a superb unit to achieve / make their drivers achieve.
hyoko
31st October 2022, 11:44
Would have had and almost perfect season with better weekends at Monaco and Singapore. Until Singapore I was hoping he could beat Alberto Ascari’s 75% win rate in a season (‘52). Now he can still beat Michael Schumacher’s 72.2% (‘04), only just, by winning Brazil and the Abu Cr4p.
Biker56 (@biker56)
31st October 2022, 12:16
What an amazing driver to win so dominantly, so dominantly he breaks the wins per season record! His achievements must obviously be celebrated – it’s 100% his driving, 0% the car.
But wait a moment, here is another driver who also dominated. His achievements must obviously be dismissed – it’s 0% his driving, 100% the car.
Hmm. I wonder what the difference could be?